In this essay, translated from Chinese, the art historian Li Gongming reads the ink paintings of Lin Yusi (b. 1978) on two levels. The first is a comprehensive, eclectic practice: trained at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Lin moves freely between fine-line and freehand brushwork, landscape, bird-and-flower and figure painting, tradition and cross-border experiment, grounded in respect for craftsmanship, materials and the relationship between technique and Dao. The second level is individual creation, where craft recedes and the painter, a self-described “wanderer of the heart”, travels between lyricism and narrative, silence and noise, illusion and reality. Lin’s works abound in creative variations, notably the mirroring of the self and the other in his little figures and mythical beasts drawn from classical legend and cartoons. Drawing on Daniel Arasse’s warning that viewers often “see nothing”, and on Yves Bonnefoy’s notions of the “hinterland” (arrière-pays) and the “impossible potential”, the author interprets Lin’s misty mountains, forests and stones as images of hidden time, life and decay. Finally, recalling Gnostic ideas of knowledge through seeing, he presents the paintings as invitations to contemplation between painting and poetry.